This post is a continuation of last week’s post, which outlined the history and current state of Virtual Reality. Today, I look forward into the future of the technology and examine its potential national security implications. To read part 1 and catch up on the topic check out last week’s blog here.

Virtual reality (VR) is a term that applies to computer-simulated environments that can simulate physical presence in places in the real world, as well as in imaginary worlds. This can vary from flight and other vehicle simulators, to video games, to immersion programs for training of military tactics, to medical and therapeutic uses.

ORLANDO — If you had to pick 10 technology-related trends that will impact your enterprise infrastructure in the coming year, Gartner says you’d do well to start with virtualization and move to other issues such as social media influence, energy issues and flat networks to name a few.

Are you curious about Windows 8, the upcoming operating system from Microsoft? Try Windows 8 in a virtual machine, right now, for free. All you need to do is download the free ISO file and set up VirtualBox properly.

If there is one requirement that I have for most online productivity services that I choose to use, it is ease of use. I want to be able to instantly start using the service without any hassle (preferably without any signup), and there should be virtually no learning curve.